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I'm currently running Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 on my laptop, and things have been pretty smooth. Today, I felt kinda bored, and so I thought I'd try out the Deepin Desktop Environment. I followed the instructions from another question on this website. The instructions were to type the following commands in Terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:leaeasy/dde sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install dde

Once that finished, I rebooted and saw the login screen for Deepin. I logged in, and went around all the features. But after a while, I got bored and wanted to switch back to GNOME. I logged out, and logged into GNOME. I opened Terminal, and typed the following command: (NOTE: All the deepin apps were available in my GNOME session, and would work. Although, I'd get an error report after I'd close them. And the Deepin Terminal was set as my default terminal.).

sudo apt purge dde ; sudo apt autoremove

I thought the job was done. But after I rebooted, I still got the Deepin login screen (My default was LightDM with the Unity Greeter). I selected GNOME from the list of DEs. But after logging into GNOME, I saw that the Deepin Terminal was still there (And set as the default terminal). I tried running my previous commands again, but it said that the package dde wasn't found. Now if I try logging into Deepin, it logs in, but the screen is void of anything except for the wallpaper. What do I do? I haven't found a solution for this anywhere online.

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  • You've learned a good lesson here: DEs are usually easy to install but very hard to remove entirely. And dde is a meta-package (like e.g. ubuntu-desktop or even libreoffice), useful to install a set of other packages in one go and that's it. Removing/purging a meta-package does nothing besides the package itself. Nothing else installed with will be removed therefore it changes... Absolutely nothing.
    – user692175
    Aug 11, 2017 at 20:26
  • @MichaelBay Well, is there a way that I can fix this?
    – Caramello
    Aug 12, 2017 at 5:11
  • I suppose you can try to find and remove everything that was installed from that PPA but even then there's no guarantee everything will be as before (settings might have been changed, etc.). Maybe ppa-purge still works but I'm not sure as I never used it after removing the PPA by other means. You see, PPA-Purge was invented just for that: An easy way to revert anything installed by a given PPA.
    – user692175
    Aug 12, 2017 at 5:16
  • @MichaelBay Thank you so much! This worked perfectly. I typed sudo ppa-purge ppa:leaeasy/dde. I rebooted, and everything is back to normal. Can you post your solution as an answer? That way, I can select it as the accepted answer. :)
    – Caramello
    Aug 12, 2017 at 5:55

6 Answers 6

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PPA-Purge was designed as a bash shell script capable of automatically downgrading all packages in a given PPA back to the Ubuntu versions.

It can be used here to uninstall or downgrade everything previously installed by dde from its own repository.

If not installed already it can be easily installed with sudo apt install ppa-purge. Then run it against the PPA:

sudo ppa-purge ppa:leaeasy/dde

Obs.: There's no guarantee that everything will be as before because some settings might have been changed. Usually the purge also removes settings but not always. A Desktop Environment is complex, with hundreds or thousands of different packages carefully knitted together, making it really hard to completely remove it once installed.

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  • I like your account picture. ;) I notice it when I was reviewing edits.
    – MathCubes
    Aug 13, 2017 at 21:01
  • @MathCubes Thanks. It's pretty common though.
    – user692175
    Aug 13, 2017 at 21:05
  • Yeah, but I know what is stands for.
    – MathCubes
    Aug 13, 2017 at 21:22
  • @MathCubes It stands for "Apitevist" which also includes, by definition, the other thing you're thinking about ;-)
    – user692175
    Aug 13, 2017 at 21:26
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I had the same problem with KDE. so at the end what i did was , i install synaptic package manager by typing

sudo apt-get install synaptic

then open synaptic and search deepin . now you will find all the deepin packages that are in your system. mark them all for removal and finally remove them.

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  • If you do the PPA purge AND the above answer you should be pretty much back to normal.
    – Ubuntu_enthusiast
    Aug 3, 2018 at 10:50
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Based on the above, to complete uninstall and remove deepin desktop environment (dde), I did the following in the Terminal:

  1. Uninstalling desktop environment:

    sudo apt remove dde
sudo apt auto-remove dde
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:leaeasy/dde -r -y

  2. Removing remaining installed packages:

    To view installed dde remaining packages, please type or copy the following:

    apt list --installed | grep dde

    To remove all dde packages:

    sudo apt remove --purge '^dde.*'

    Type Y (Yes)

    To view installed deepin remaining packages, please type or copy the following:

    apt list --installed | grep deepin

    To remove all deeping packages:

    sudo apt remove --purge '^deepin.*'

    Type Y (Yes)

  3. Autoremove

    sudo apt autoremove

  4. Reboot your computer In the Terminal, type Reboot and you will see that dde is not longer in your login window.

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  • not perfect but it gave me a place to start. I used apt list --installed 2> /dev/null | grep ^d[de]e | awk '{print $1}' | cut -d\/ -f1 | xargs apt remove -y --purge -> please check the output list first as you may have packages matching ^d[de]e that are not dde|deepin.
    – Chaim Eliyah
    Mar 28, 2021 at 18:28
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I had some trouble with this in 19.04 but I found out I could remove the packages manually by running

apt list --installed | grep dde

and

apt list --installed | grep deepin

to see the installed deepin packages and removed them using sudo apt purge [package name] -y

for examle sudo apt purge deepin-terminal -y

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One thing I did was the following:

sudo apt purge deepin-"."

This should purge any packages with names beginning with "deepin-." I assume this should cover most (if not, all) of the Deepin-specific packages. For other prerequisites, I'm uncertain.

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sudo apt-get autoremove --purge deepin-* && sudo apt-get autoremove --purge dde*

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  • 4
    Hello and welcome on Ask Ubuntu! May I suggest to add some explanations to your answer, typically explain a bit what your commands do?
    – FloT
    May 14, 2020 at 10:55

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